Colorado State University Extension
SafeFood Rapid Response Network
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The 2001 Food Safety Survey: What it Suggests
Edited by: Mary Schroeder, M.S., R.D. & Pat Kendall, Ph.D., R.D., Colorado State - Fall 2002
Results of the 2001 Food Safety Survey, a nationwide telephone survey of 4,500 adult consumers, have been released by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This survey, conducted in 1988, 1993, 1998 and 2001, has been used by FDA for risk assessments, regulatory and policy matters, and to guide consumer education. As the survey has been conducted several times over a span of years, the data can be used to suggest trends in the area of food safety practices, specifically trends related to cross contamination and to consumption of potentially risky food.
The survey concentrates on cross-contamination issues (cleaning hands and cutting surfaces after touching or cutting raw fish, meat and chicken) and on eating potentially risky foods (pink hamburger, steak tartar, and raw oysters, clams, fish and eggs). The good news is that the data suggest significant improvement between 1993 and 1998 for food safety practices related to cross contamination as well as with most (5 of 6 measures) food safety practices related to consumption of potentially risky food. For example, not washing hands after touching meat declined from 23% reportedly following the behavior in 1988 to 15% in 2001. Likewise, 27% reported not washing their cutting board after touching raw meat in 1988, compared to 13% in 2001.
The researchers suggest that people have safer cross-contamination behaviors with respect to some foods, indicating a differing relative perceived risk for various foods. It was reported that behaviors regarding fish have the safest cross-contamination pattern, behaviors with meat and chicken have the next safest, and behaviors with eggs have the least safe cross-contamination pattern. For example, in 1993, 16% of people did not wash their hands after handling raw fish, 28.5% did not wash hands after touching raw meat or chicken, and 66% did not wash hands after cracking raw eggs. A similar pattern was noted in 2001: 10% for fish, 15% for meat and chicken, and 55% for eggs.
Consumption of potentially risky foods has only been tracked from 1993 to 2001. During this time the reported consumption of risky foods has declined for 5 of the 6 foods tracked. Specifically, from 1993 to 2001, reported consumption or raw clams declined from 8% to 6%, consumption of raw oysters declined from 16 to 6% and consumption of steak tartar declined from 6 to 4%. During the same period, consumption of raw eggs declined from 53 to 42% and consumption of pink hamburger declined from 24 to 16%. However, consumption of raw fish increased from 9 to 15%. These trends indicate that while progress was made regarding consumption of several raw or undercooked products, we still have much work in the area of educating consumers on consumption of potentially risky foods, especially regarding the consumption of raw fish (which increased) and on the continued practice of eating raw or undercooked eggs (42%).
Source: Food Safety Survey: Summary of Major Trends in Food Handling Practices and Consumption of Potentially Risky Foods. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Consumer Studies Branch, August 27, 2002. www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/fssurvey.html.
